Top 5 Highest Selling Living Artists Who Are WOMEN ! (Part 2)

My offerings today for the Top 5 Highest selling Living Artists Who Are Women begins with the eccentric Yayoi Kusama.  (a thank you to Wikipedia for the information which I updated in part)

     Yayoi Kusama (草間 彌生 or 弥生, Kusama Yayoi, born March 22, 1929) is a Japanese artist and writer. Throughout her career she has worked in a wide variety of media, including painting, collage, sculpture, performance art and environmental installations, most of which exhibit her thematic interest in psychedelic colors, repetition and pattern. A precursor of the pop art, minimalist and feminist art movements, Kusama influenced contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.
     Kusama's work has performed strongly at auction: top prices for her work are for paintings from the late 1950s and early 1960s. As of 2012, her work has the highest turnover of any living woman artist. 
     In November 2008, Christie's New York sold a 1959 white "Infinity Net No. 2" for US $5.1 million, then a record for a living female artist.



     In comparison, the highest price for a sculpture from her New York years is £72,500 (US $147,687), for her 1965 wool, pasta, paint and hanger assemblage Golden Macaroni Jacket at Sotheby's London in October 2007.

     An acrylic on fiberglass-reinforced plastic pumpkin earned $605,000, sold also at Sotheby’s in 2013.

     Her 'Flame of Life - Dedicated to Tu-Fu (Du-Fu)' sold for US $960,000 at Art Basel/Hong Kong in May 2013, the highest price paid at the show.



Bridget Louise Riley CH CBE (born 24 April 1931 in Norwood, London) is an English painter who is one of the foremost exponents of Op art.   She currently lives and works in London, Cornwall, and France.
     In 2006, her Untitled (Diagonal Curve) (1966), a black-and-white canvas of dizzying curves, was bought by Jeffrey Deitch at Sotheby's for $2.1 million, nearly three times its $730,000 high estimate and also a record for the artist.   



In 2008, the artist’s dotted canvas Static 2 (1966) brought £1,476,500 ($2.9 million), far exceeding its £900,000 ($1.8 million) high estimate.

 

Chant 2 (1967), part of the trio shown in the Venice Biennale, went to a private American collector for £2,561,250 ($5.1 million) in 2008.



Oh heck!  I've run out of time.  But that was fun, wasn't it?  We will do part 3 tomorrow and maybe I'll throw in an extra top earning woman artist just 'cause I want to.

'Til tomorrow.

~Alex